How did I kind-of-sort-of fail at Halloween? On the work front, I forgot which day was costume day, so I missed the most important contest, and I disappointed someone, and I hate that. It just wasn’t the greatest feeling ever. I wasn’t alone in dressing up on the wrong day, but still. I also failed to carve a pumpkin for the jack-o’-lantern contest, even though I had good reason not to. So there was that.

I did bake a festive cake to bring to work, though:

On the home front, trick-or-treaters hit up my street to the point where I ran out of candy early and had to turn off my lights! This has never happened before. Last year there were a few, in contrast to previous years in which there were none. I was happy to have had any trick-or-treaters at all.

This year, I had more trick-or-treaters than I could count, but my glee was short-lived. It was especially sad because the last ones I could treat were a group of five, and I only had three pieces of candy left, and I had to tell them that. I never thought I would know the particular feeling of awfulness that comes with having to tell eager children on Halloween that you don’t have candy for them. The two older kids in the back immediately said to give the three pieces to the three littler ones in the front (the five of them ranged from four to ten, I’d say). Really adorable, sweet kids, all of them.

Between the costume fail and the candy fail, it was a bit of a disheartening Halloween, but at least ‘ol Michael Myers out there was a success. All of the parents who came to my door said that he scared them. My work here is done.

And what of my costume, you’ve been asking?

Well, I dressed up as a movie character this year. The last time I did a movie character costume was in the mid-2000’s when I went as the creepy ghost girl in The Ring. This time, I went as the protagonist (both of them, heheh) in Malignant. Basically, I just wore nicer clothing than usual, and a wig – but a wig with a twist.

This is what I look like with an abundance of thick hair, in contrast to my natural thin and sparse (and getting sparser) hair.

There was another person in costume standing next to me in the above pic, but as I forgot to obtain anyone’s permission to post their pics here, I cropped them out and refrained from posting others. All of the costumes were marvelous, though! You can take my word for it.

S P O I L E R – A L E R T !!!

If you haven’t seen Malignant and you’re planning to, do not read or scroll past this point.

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Now here’s the back:

And this is what I look like with an abundance of hair and a sentient tumor-face emerging from the back of my head. Malignant was inspirational! I went as both Madison and Gabriel, Madison’s deranged monster tumor twin who’d been lying dormant in the back of her head until he awoke and burst through to embark on his murderous revenge spree, dragging Madison’s body along as his vehicle. Madison in the front, Gabriel in the back. A talented friend generously sewed the mask onto the back of the wig, in case you were wondering how this came together.

And that was that for Halloween 2021! Michael Myers goes back into his box today. Samhain is over and Yule is the next holiday on the Wheel of the Year, but there’s a whole season of harvesty goodness and vibes in between, and I will be reveling in it. It’s always sad to see the last stone fruit disappear from the grocery stores at the end of summer, but put a fresh, tasty, in-season apple in front of me, and I’m all in.

Have a lovely day and week ahead, my friends.